Big Decisions
What could prompt me to break such a long silence? Why a new camera of course!!
I think for anyone who's been reading me for a while knows, I'm a pretty keen amateur photographer. About 5 years ago, I upgraded my otherwise perfectly lovely Olympus point and shoot for a "bridge" camera in the guise of a Panasonic DMC-FZ50. The biggest reason I didn't go for a DSLR was because I was utterly baffled by the choices and knew that my photography still had quite a bit of room to grow. And let me tell you my little Panasonic and I really went some places and took some amazing pictures!
But, I was starting to get frustrated with it's rather noisy performance in low light and I wanted more flexibility that interchangeable lenses would give me. So now, the time had come for a DSLR, but which one? Cannon? Nikon? Something in the 4/3rds vein?
After much hemming and hawing I whittled my "must have" list down to the following:
This left me with a really short list of exactly 3 cameras of which the clear winner was. . .a Pentax K-5 and the 17-55mm kit lens. The most amazing thing, of course, was that raayat decided to buy it for me as a late birthday/early christmas-anniversary present. *kisses*
It does everything I want it to do and then some and holy cow do I have a lot of learning to do! I have actually downloaded the manual and have been reading it in what little "spare" time I find. But so far I'm loving it! Great flexibility and beautiful control to give me just the pictures I see in my mind's eye. I still have a long way to go, of course, as I figure out all the features, but so far I'm super, super pleased. I've put up a couple of sets already with it over on flickr: my crazy family at Thanksgiving and a ramble near St. Margaret's-at-cliffe
My only complaint so far - and I can't tell if this is the lens or just me not having figured out the settings or both - is that the focus is not quite as sharp as I would ordinarily wish. It's not out of focus by any stretch, but it does veer more towards the soft side, which for portraits and the like is perfect (such as these two), but for some finer detail work (like these) it's less than ideal.
Now the really (not very) funny thing was that not 6 months before a friend of mine kuoirad had offered me his Pentax! Along with an assortment of lenses. C'est la vie. I knew the camera was long gone, but turns out that he still had the lenses and a pretty awesome flash. So I now have a Sigma 170-500mm F5-6.3 telephoto and a Sigma 70-300mm F4-5.6, the latter of which, oddly enough, has a "macro" setting at the 300m range. Bizarre, but hey whatevs.
So exciting times! And even more exciting is the event that spurred me on to buy it at this particular moment in time. . .but that's for next time ;)
update: I had stupidly forgotten that kuoirad was on LJ (oops!) and to add that the early acquisition of my lovely new toy was due entirely to my beloved. Obviously I'm still not thinking quite as clearly as I ought! More rest for me, I suppose.
I think for anyone who's been reading me for a while knows, I'm a pretty keen amateur photographer. About 5 years ago, I upgraded my otherwise perfectly lovely Olympus point and shoot for a "bridge" camera in the guise of a Panasonic DMC-FZ50. The biggest reason I didn't go for a DSLR was because I was utterly baffled by the choices and knew that my photography still had quite a bit of room to grow. And let me tell you my little Panasonic and I really went some places and took some amazing pictures!
But, I was starting to get frustrated with it's rather noisy performance in low light and I wanted more flexibility that interchangeable lenses would give me. So now, the time had come for a DSLR, but which one? Cannon? Nikon? Something in the 4/3rds vein?
After much hemming and hawing I whittled my "must have" list down to the following:
- lightest & smallest body possible (sorry Nikon)
- intuitive menu system (sorry Cannon)
- good low light performance (ie very little noise at ISOs above 1600 - sorry 4/3rds)
- a decent range of good glass lenses (surprising how much good glass there is out there!)
- took SD cards (seeing as I have a ton of them - sorry Olympus)
This left me with a really short list of exactly 3 cameras of which the clear winner was. . .a Pentax K-5 and the 17-55mm kit lens. The most amazing thing, of course, was that raayat decided to buy it for me as a late birthday/early christmas-anniversary present. *kisses*
It does everything I want it to do and then some and holy cow do I have a lot of learning to do! I have actually downloaded the manual and have been reading it in what little "spare" time I find. But so far I'm loving it! Great flexibility and beautiful control to give me just the pictures I see in my mind's eye. I still have a long way to go, of course, as I figure out all the features, but so far I'm super, super pleased. I've put up a couple of sets already with it over on flickr: my crazy family at Thanksgiving and a ramble near St. Margaret's-at-cliffe
My only complaint so far - and I can't tell if this is the lens or just me not having figured out the settings or both - is that the focus is not quite as sharp as I would ordinarily wish. It's not out of focus by any stretch, but it does veer more towards the soft side, which for portraits and the like is perfect (such as these two), but for some finer detail work (like these) it's less than ideal.
Now the really (not very) funny thing was that not 6 months before a friend of mine kuoirad had offered me his Pentax! Along with an assortment of lenses. C'est la vie. I knew the camera was long gone, but turns out that he still had the lenses and a pretty awesome flash. So I now have a Sigma 170-500mm F5-6.3 telephoto and a Sigma 70-300mm F4-5.6, the latter of which, oddly enough, has a "macro" setting at the 300m range. Bizarre, but hey whatevs.
So exciting times! And even more exciting is the event that spurred me on to buy it at this particular moment in time. . .but that's for next time ;)
update: I had stupidly forgotten that kuoirad was on LJ (oops!) and to add that the early acquisition of my lovely new toy was due entirely to my beloved. Obviously I'm still not thinking quite as clearly as I ought! More rest for me, I suppose.